Midtown Urbanist
Superstar
Why stop there?
Make all our arterial bus routes have their own lane. Watch TTC ridership skyrocket.
|
|
|
TTC Ridership Growth Strategy 2
- Thread starter Northern Light
- Start date
Make all our arterial bus routes have their own lane. Watch TTC ridership skyrocket.
Towered
Superstar
I seriously don't understand why none of the grotesquely wide suburban arterial roads in Toronto have fully separated BRT in their own ROW's. It's cheap, easy to implement, and would see transit ridership skyrocket. It's a no-brainer.
Yet nothing like that gets done because of all the endless debates about where to build new subways. It's maddening.
W. K. Lis
Superstar
The suburban Councillors don't want to take a lane away from their precious single-occupant automobiles. They'll rather bury any transit improvements underground in any king of subway, out of sight and out of mind.
dowlingm
Senior Member
I'm disappointed that they seem to be giving up on expanding 512.
https://twitter.com/SwanBoatSteve/status/954745408554598400
I'm deeply sceptical of "LRT" on Jane south of Eglinton due to the narrowing road ROW - not to mention grade changes - and have been from the day Transit City was announced. I would much rather see a downtown streetcar extension along St Clair and up Jane to a Crosstown-Jane LRT-Jane streetcar interchange at Eglinton and Jane. The 512 itself could go to Scarlett Road, and expropriate the industrial building west of Scarlett as a barn.
The CPR makes connections south problematic given the bridge heights at Jane and at Scarlett, but that is just as true for "uptown" cars, and the City may have to confront its failure to obtain the northern parts of Lambton when CPR was selling bits to a Chevy dealership as the Jane bridge could have been reduced in width.
https://twitter.com/SwanBoatSteve/status/954745408554598400
I'm deeply sceptical of "LRT" on Jane south of Eglinton due to the narrowing road ROW - not to mention grade changes - and have been from the day Transit City was announced. I would much rather see a downtown streetcar extension along St Clair and up Jane to a Crosstown-Jane LRT-Jane streetcar interchange at Eglinton and Jane. The 512 itself could go to Scarlett Road, and expropriate the industrial building west of Scarlett as a barn.
The CPR makes connections south problematic given the bridge heights at Jane and at Scarlett, but that is just as true for "uptown" cars, and the City may have to confront its failure to obtain the northern parts of Lambton when CPR was selling bits to a Chevy dealership as the Jane bridge could have been reduced in width.
Midtown Urbanist
Superstar
Seems so shortsighted + a lack of ambition.
Just tell these councillors and the auto-dependent people who vote for them that making a lane for buses means that buses are no longer impeding their travel lanes by weaving in and out of bus stops and traffic.
Leo_Chan
Senior Member
But then they'll lose turning lanes due to road ROW width restrictions! Exactly what happened to Highway 7
.
Cobra
Senior Member
Good point. Finch West should have had a combo of ROW lanes + Express Branch years ago (still doesn't have one)
Look at the results of the 185 Don Mills Rocket which is an express service and dedicated lanes on Don Mills Road
According to Google Maps for Don Mills Station to Pape Station
185 Don Mills Rocket: 46 minutes
Line 4-1-2: 47 minutes
Streety McCarface
Senior Member
You need both, but what really baffles my mind is how routes like Steeles east and west (Which have a combined ridership of probably around 60-70K PPD) don't have dedicated lanes whereas VIVA and BT have BRT lines on routes equivalent to that of the Sherbourne bus or Kipling South Buses (lines which are really really short)
Even though there's an extra minute associated, I'd still take the subway. You're less likely to get stuck at a light and the subway ride is much more comfortable.
amnesiajune
Senior Member
Brampton doesn't have dedicated bus lanes, and the reasoning behind BRT in York Region is complicated. To make it brief, they have very different goals than the TTC, and the way YRT is run is different from the TTC. In York Region, the bus lanes were part of a much broader project that involved many different departments and improvements - higher density, mixed-use neighbourhoods, economic development, bike lanes, better walkability, more road capacity, and better transit. On Steeles, the proposed BRT is seen as nothing but a public transit project, so it's not a very compelling thing to fund down at city hall (especially when half of its benefits go to a side of the street that doesn't vote for or pay taxes to them).